October 16, 2015

30 Day Small Business Cleanse: Day 15

Yesterday: Review your client/project process. What works, what doesn’t? What are your road blocks. Brainstorm 3 ways to simplify your workflow and then create an action plan for implementing them.

Discussing yesterday's tasks over a late but very civilized breakfast.

Huzzah! This was just the impetus we needed to figure out some of the issues with our custom project work flow. Up until now, we have only ever done a few select custom jobs here and there. But, one of the benefits of purchasing the Heidelberg Windmill press a few years ago, was that we would be able to take on more custom jobs. Here is one of the roadblocks we tackled as part of this assignment, the outcome of which we're hoping will help simplify our workflow.

For the most part, we've figured out the back end paperwork for custom work as we went along. We have all of the components, but we've always had trouble keeping track of the project from start to finish, especially since there are two of us and we're each responsible for different stages. After a fair bit of discussion we decided we needed to create a client work sheet. A printed sheet that would follow each stage of a custom job from start to finish. We were inspired by similar sheets created by Zie Campbell a graphic designer, illustrator and blogger. She constructed several layouts to help her keep track of her different freelance projects (her sheets are available as a download here for purchase). We're hoping that these work sheets will function as a roadmap of sorts for our custom work from now on.

Today: Sit down and read over your mission statement. Does it still accurately reflect your business and it’s aspirations? Polish it until it does. If you don’t have a mission statement, now is the time to write one!